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Past Events

Join us on Tuesday, February 9 for World Monuments Fund’s 2016 Paul Mellon Lecture.

Cocktails at 6:15 PM
Lecture begins promptly at 7:00 PM

The stepping stone between Europe and Africa, the gateway between the East and the West, at once a stronghold, clearinghouse, and observation post, Sicily has been invaded and fought over by Phoenicians and Greeks, Carthaginians and Romans, Goths and Byzantines, Arabs and Normans, Germans, Spaniards, and French for thousands of years. It has belonged to them all— and yet has properly been part of none.

John Julius Norwich was inspired to become a writer by his first visit, in 1961, and his recent book, upon which this lecture is based, traces the history of the island. The lecture covers everything from erupting volcanoes to the assassination of Byzantine emperors, from Lord Nelson’s affair with Emma Hamilton to Garibaldi and the rise of the Mafia. It takes in the key buildings and towns, and is packed with unforgettable stories and characters.

Please join us for a private screening of The Destruction of Memory. Over the past century, cultural destruction has wrought catastrophic results around the globe, but the war against culture is by no means over—if anything, it's been steadily increasing. The push to protect, salvage, and rebuild has moved in step with the destruction. Legislation and policy have played a role, but heroic individuals have consistently fought back, sometimes risking or losing their lives to protect not just other human beings, but their cultural identity—to save the record of who they are.

Join us for an intimate evening with Robert Wilson, one of the world’s foremost theater and visual artists, and an avant-garde visionary. Wilson invites us into his astonishing aesthetic universe with hundreds of striking images from throughout his prolific career, in an intimate self-portrait of his creative process.

Every two years, the World Monuments Watch is a call to action for cultural heritage around the globe that is at risk from the forces of nature and the impact of social, political, and economic change. Celebrating the 20th Anniversary of the Watch, this lecture will cover the history of the Watch and highlight 2016 sites, which will be announced in mid- October.

The Mughal emperors once ruled over the greatest of all Muslim empires. Agra, their capital from 1556 to 1658, had a population of almost 700,000, dwarfing the largest cities of the West. It was created to resemble an earthly paradise, with fragrant gardens along a lazy bend of the Yamuna River. Dalrymple will lead us on a journey through Mughal Agra, where World Monuments Fund is currently collaborating on the restoration of two surviving gardens.

Born out of the political utopian aspirations of the Cuban Revolution, the dramatic brick and terra-cotta National Art Schools on the site of the Havana Country Club represent a fleeting moment in the history of Latin American modernism.